The truly depressing aspect of this, aside from Debord's suicide, is the way the System absorbs even criticism. How is this possible? Is it a process? A formula? A method?
That aspect fascinates me. How even hard criticism of the type published by Debord can become useful to the regime. Is it neutered by absorption?
One tame example is how the TV programme Big Brother circumvents the horror of Orwell's world and his use of the term and reimagines it as mildly invasive surveillance for entertainment purposes, all of it consented to by the participants. This to me neuters the term forever; it can never quite regain the sinister element understood by Orwell. Perhaps this is a similar thing to the capture of Debord's ideas in The Society of the Spectacle.
The process of writing a paper on the effects of TV on children finished my affair with video media forever. Learning to access insight through meditation, but the ultimate teacher is nature.
Wandering in the brush and boreal forest in the depth of winter. Finding dangerous collections of kindling I burn a bit to stay warm and clean the area around majestic trees. Day dreaming of a day when it will be all chipped and used to keep us warm instead of fueling a voracious fire fighting industry.
Hope to howl at the moon and anyone who will hear me for decades more yet. Learning makes me feel young and naive. Recently got through the Gulag Archipelago and now grinding through Operation Paperclip. We shit on Russians to our own demise!
Totalitarianism is the previleging of Unity over Multiplicity- ie: the hell of Sameness, a dull Unity of mere uniformity.
Reading The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul_Han.
In the neo- liberal regime, the politics of time produces anxiety and insecurity. The diabolical logic of the neo-liberal order is that anxiety increases productivity. .. globalism is the viral violence of networks and the virtual. Virtuality is viral. .. Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication... The neo-liberal regime sees people as free, authentic and creative in producing themselves and in performing themselves. People now communicate themselves to death. The only hope is when dis-orientation, an anxiety that immerses the self in the transparent hell of sameness,leads to an epiphany, the emergence of an event, a voluntary acceptance of suffering as the sine qua non of radical subjectively- ie conversion, transcendence.
The phenomenon of terrorism and ethno- nationalism have a common root in a reaction to globalism. The reaction is not in reality a fear, a dread or a disgust of foreigners, but more an imaginary fear of an uncertain future, or angry at the costly burden or indeed an envy and resentment at their preferred status. So the question is, then, what is this globalism that produces Terrorism and ethno- nationalism?
The violence of the Global is carcinomatous. It spreads like ' cancerous cells' through ' endless proliferation, excrescence and metastasis ' The violence of the Global is ' a viral violence, that of networks and the virtual. Virtuality is viral. Immunities restrict the circulation of information, capital and communication. ....human beings are reduced to a data which can be controlled and exploited....the aim is to translate a life into a dataset. The more data there are about a person, the better the person can be surveilled, controlled and economically exploited....Phono sapiens believe they are merely playing, but are in fact being UTTERLY exploited and controlled. The smartphone seems to be a playground, but is a DIGITAL PANOPTICAN.."
When freedom and surveillance coincide, dominance becomes complete. The smart phone is an efficient informant that exposes us to 24/7 surveillance- a smart comfort zone. What is needed is understanding- the paradox of an information society is that people are imprisoned by information. A digital prison is transparent. Transparency is the systematic compulsion of the information regime, which assumes people are free, authentic and creative, at all times, performing themselves and producing themselves. The information regimes formula for Domination is " We communicate ourselves to death" What is needed is a phenomenology of information- a contemplative understanding that leads to a creative lifeworld.
Infodemic/ Information regime.
Information follows its own logic, has its own temporality - it has its own dignity beyond truth and lie. Fake news is, first of all, information. It produces its EFFECT before the process of verification has even begun. Information flies past the truth, and the truth can never catch up. Any attempt at fighting the infodemic with truth is doomed to failure. The infodemic is RESISTANT TO truth
Infocracy- Byung-Chul_Han
Byung Chul Han
"The age of truth appears to be over. The regime of information has supplanted the regime of truth. The regime of truth will turn out to be a brief one"
Byung-Chul_Han
The Politics of Time: Anxiety
Dischroncity.
The disenchantment of modernity is a crisis of Narration. The compulsion to accelerate the circulation of capital, information and consumption is destructive of time- temporality needed for thought, wonder, experience and love- imagination, language, gaze , story telling, inwardness. A narcissification of perception and reality.
Big Data- Information and Transparency have replaced truth- a Narcissistic compulsion to be transparent- self illumination, self- exposure as a Alienated, isolated achievement - performance subjects addicted to the "feeling of freedom" which is entirely illusory. Psychogramme- the ability to manipulate and control the desires, needs and wishes of the collective unconscious. Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication.
Neo-liberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilises and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programming and steering. ... the interpellation of the docile subject, his inwardness, his identity and his consciousness by the logic of capitalism... domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication.. technological domination that has discovered the productive force of the psyche... neoliberal psychopolitics of experiencing and emotion which only ensares the Subject deeper and deeper in the state of subjection and subjugation.... the art of lingering stands opposed to the 'psychological terror' through which subjugating subjectivation occurs.... an overthrow in which domination occurs.
The Terror of the Same.
The time in which there was such a thing as the Other is over. The Other as desire, the Other as hell and the Other as PAIN disappear. The negativity of the Other now gives way to the positivity of the Same. The social body is made sick not by denial and prohibition, but by over- communication; not by suppression and negation, but by permissiveness and affirmation. The pathological sign of our times is not repression but depression. DESTRUCTIVE pressure comes not from the Other but from WIthin! Depression as internal pressure develops AUTO-AGGRESSIVE traits. The depressive performance subject is beaten down or suffocated by the self. Not only the violence of the Other is destructive; the expulsion of the Other sets in motion an entirely different process of DESTRUCTION, namely that of SELF-DESTRUCTION. The dialectic of violence applies: A SYSTEM THAT REJECTS THE NEGATIVITY OF THE OTHER DEVELOPS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TRAITS..... the proliferation of the Same presents itself as growth. At a certain point, however, production is no longer production but destructive, information is no longer information but deformative, and communication is no longer communication but merely cumulative.....binge watching....consumer livestock, fattened on ever- new sameness... the proliferation of the Same resembles not a carcinoma but a coma, and does NOT meet with any immunological defences! One googled oneself into unconsciousness.
It is formed through technology and lacks eros. Eros guides the soul. It holds sway over all its parts: pleasure based desire ( epithumia), spiritedness and courage (thumos), and reason (logos). An eros driven soul produces beautiful things, and above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value. Today, it seems that desire (epithumia) dominates the soul's experience of pleasure. For this reason, actions are rarely THUMOS driven. Rage is thumotic: it radically breaks with convention and inaugurates a NEW state of affairs. But now, it is increasingly yielding to annoyance, or dissatisfaction, which lacks the negativity of rupture and instead allows circumstances to persist. Moreover, without eros, logos is deteriorating into data-driven calculation, which is incapable of reckoning the event, the incalculable....
The Swarm by Byung-Chul_Han
The absolute precedence and priority of the present is the hallmark of our world. It is scattering time into a mere sequencing of purely disposable presences. Thereby, the future is degrading into an optimised present. The totalisation of the present destroys actions that GIVE TIME, such as taking responsibility and making promises.
The occupants of the digital panoptican are not prisoners. Their element is illusory freedom. They feed the digital panoptican by exhibiting themselves and shining a light on every part of their lives.......... Auto-exploition is more efficient than allo- exploitation because a feeling of freedom accompanies it. In the process of autoillumination, pornographic exhibition and panoptic control mergd into one. Control society reaches completion when it's inhabitants communicate, not because of external constraints but one of inner need- when fear about giving up one's private and intimate sphere- yields to the urge to put oneself on display, without shame. In other words, it occurs when freedom and control prove indistinguishable.
Data Barbarism.(Dadaism)
When the data collected is published and exchanged, self- tracking comes to resemble self- surveillance more and more. The subject of today's world is an entrepreneur of the self, practising self-exploitation- and by the same token, self surveillance. The auto exploiting subject carries around its own labour camp; here, it is perpetrator and victim at one and the same time. As a self- illuminating, self- surveilling subject, it bears its own internal Panoptican within; here, there is no difference between guard and inmate. The digitalised, networked subject is a PANOPTICAN OF ITSELF. This ensures that each and every person has now taken on the task of conducting perpetual auto-surveillance (communicating ourselves to death- narcissist compulsion to self- exposure) ..... digital psychopolitics manages to intervene in psychic processes in a prospective fashion. Quite possibly, it is even FASTER than free will. As such, it could overtake it. If so, this would herald the END OF FREEDOM........in this light, Big Data is making the ID INTO AN EGO to be exploited psychopolitically. (Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication)
Domination is complete when surveillance coincides
with limitless communication.
The digital is the medium of projection.
Narcissistic islands of egos. Dissolving all boundaries in digital projection of dots and pixels, zeros and ones.
Compulsion and constraint now take the form of performance,achievement, self-optimisation and auto-exploition. Freedom is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. More freedom amounts to more pressure, as a form of coercion.
The achievement subject exploits itself until it collapses. It develops AUTO-AGGRESSIVE traits.
see thru it!
the spectacle is a conceptual overlay,
which is at odds with phenomenal reality
hence schizophrenia normalcy
'everything we are taught is a lie'
rimbaud
The truly depressing aspect of this, aside from Debord's suicide, is the way the System absorbs even criticism. How is this possible? Is it a process? A formula? A method?
That aspect fascinates me. How even hard criticism of the type published by Debord can become useful to the regime. Is it neutered by absorption?
One tame example is how the TV programme Big Brother circumvents the horror of Orwell's world and his use of the term and reimagines it as mildly invasive surveillance for entertainment purposes, all of it consented to by the participants. This to me neuters the term forever; it can never quite regain the sinister element understood by Orwell. Perhaps this is a similar thing to the capture of Debord's ideas in The Society of the Spectacle.
the spectacle recuperates, that is its nature.
and yes even to the point of situationism itself.
which means the only 'way out' is to refuse to enter the arena
refuse to 'define your terms'
Yes good points. Throw away your TV rather than ration it.
The process of writing a paper on the effects of TV on children finished my affair with video media forever. Learning to access insight through meditation, but the ultimate teacher is nature.
Wandering in the brush and boreal forest in the depth of winter. Finding dangerous collections of kindling I burn a bit to stay warm and clean the area around majestic trees. Day dreaming of a day when it will be all chipped and used to keep us warm instead of fueling a voracious fire fighting industry.
Hope to howl at the moon and anyone who will hear me for decades more yet. Learning makes me feel young and naive. Recently got through the Gulag Archipelago and now grinding through Operation Paperclip. We shit on Russians to our own demise!
Great article. Love Debord.
Dick Cheney is too.
Articolo illuminante sulla società moderna dedita solo alla spettacolarizzazione di sé stessa e nulla più.
Totalitarianism is the previleging of Unity over Multiplicity- ie: the hell of Sameness, a dull Unity of mere uniformity.
Reading The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul_Han.
In the neo- liberal regime, the politics of time produces anxiety and insecurity. The diabolical logic of the neo-liberal order is that anxiety increases productivity. .. globalism is the viral violence of networks and the virtual. Virtuality is viral. .. Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication... The neo-liberal regime sees people as free, authentic and creative in producing themselves and in performing themselves. People now communicate themselves to death. The only hope is when dis-orientation, an anxiety that immerses the self in the transparent hell of sameness,leads to an epiphany, the emergence of an event, a voluntary acceptance of suffering as the sine qua non of radical subjectively- ie conversion, transcendence.
The phenomenon of terrorism and ethno- nationalism have a common root in a reaction to globalism. The reaction is not in reality a fear, a dread or a disgust of foreigners, but more an imaginary fear of an uncertain future, or angry at the costly burden or indeed an envy and resentment at their preferred status. So the question is, then, what is this globalism that produces Terrorism and ethno- nationalism?
The violence of the Global is carcinomatous. It spreads like ' cancerous cells' through ' endless proliferation, excrescence and metastasis ' The violence of the Global is ' a viral violence, that of networks and the virtual. Virtuality is viral. Immunities restrict the circulation of information, capital and communication. ....human beings are reduced to a data which can be controlled and exploited....the aim is to translate a life into a dataset. The more data there are about a person, the better the person can be surveilled, controlled and economically exploited....Phono sapiens believe they are merely playing, but are in fact being UTTERLY exploited and controlled. The smartphone seems to be a playground, but is a DIGITAL PANOPTICAN.."
When freedom and surveillance coincide, dominance becomes complete. The smart phone is an efficient informant that exposes us to 24/7 surveillance- a smart comfort zone. What is needed is understanding- the paradox of an information society is that people are imprisoned by information. A digital prison is transparent. Transparency is the systematic compulsion of the information regime, which assumes people are free, authentic and creative, at all times, performing themselves and producing themselves. The information regimes formula for Domination is " We communicate ourselves to death" What is needed is a phenomenology of information- a contemplative understanding that leads to a creative lifeworld.
Infodemic/ Information regime.
Information follows its own logic, has its own temporality - it has its own dignity beyond truth and lie. Fake news is, first of all, information. It produces its EFFECT before the process of verification has even begun. Information flies past the truth, and the truth can never catch up. Any attempt at fighting the infodemic with truth is doomed to failure. The infodemic is RESISTANT TO truth
Infocracy- Byung-Chul_Han
Byung Chul Han
"The age of truth appears to be over. The regime of information has supplanted the regime of truth. The regime of truth will turn out to be a brief one"
Byung-Chul_Han
The Politics of Time: Anxiety
Dischroncity.
The disenchantment of modernity is a crisis of Narration. The compulsion to accelerate the circulation of capital, information and consumption is destructive of time- temporality needed for thought, wonder, experience and love- imagination, language, gaze , story telling, inwardness. A narcissification of perception and reality.
Read The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul_Han.
Psychopolitics - Byung-Chul_Han.
Big Data- Information and Transparency have replaced truth- a Narcissistic compulsion to be transparent- self illumination, self- exposure as a Alienated, isolated achievement - performance subjects addicted to the "feeling of freedom" which is entirely illusory. Psychogramme- the ability to manipulate and control the desires, needs and wishes of the collective unconscious. Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication.
Neo-liberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilises and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programming and steering. ... the interpellation of the docile subject, his inwardness, his identity and his consciousness by the logic of capitalism... domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication.. technological domination that has discovered the productive force of the psyche... neoliberal psychopolitics of experiencing and emotion which only ensares the Subject deeper and deeper in the state of subjection and subjugation.... the art of lingering stands opposed to the 'psychological terror' through which subjugating subjectivation occurs.... an overthrow in which domination occurs.
The Terror of the Same.
The time in which there was such a thing as the Other is over. The Other as desire, the Other as hell and the Other as PAIN disappear. The negativity of the Other now gives way to the positivity of the Same. The social body is made sick not by denial and prohibition, but by over- communication; not by suppression and negation, but by permissiveness and affirmation. The pathological sign of our times is not repression but depression. DESTRUCTIVE pressure comes not from the Other but from WIthin! Depression as internal pressure develops AUTO-AGGRESSIVE traits. The depressive performance subject is beaten down or suffocated by the self. Not only the violence of the Other is destructive; the expulsion of the Other sets in motion an entirely different process of DESTRUCTION, namely that of SELF-DESTRUCTION. The dialectic of violence applies: A SYSTEM THAT REJECTS THE NEGATIVITY OF THE OTHER DEVELOPS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TRAITS..... the proliferation of the Same presents itself as growth. At a certain point, however, production is no longer production but destructive, information is no longer information but deformative, and communication is no longer communication but merely cumulative.....binge watching....consumer livestock, fattened on ever- new sameness... the proliferation of the Same resembles not a carcinoma but a coma, and does NOT meet with any immunological defences! One googled oneself into unconsciousness.
The Palliative Society Byung-Chul_Han
The Politics of Eros.
It is formed through technology and lacks eros. Eros guides the soul. It holds sway over all its parts: pleasure based desire ( epithumia), spiritedness and courage (thumos), and reason (logos). An eros driven soul produces beautiful things, and above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value. Today, it seems that desire (epithumia) dominates the soul's experience of pleasure. For this reason, actions are rarely THUMOS driven. Rage is thumotic: it radically breaks with convention and inaugurates a NEW state of affairs. But now, it is increasingly yielding to annoyance, or dissatisfaction, which lacks the negativity of rupture and instead allows circumstances to persist. Moreover, without eros, logos is deteriorating into data-driven calculation, which is incapable of reckoning the event, the incalculable....
The Swarm by Byung-Chul_Han
The absolute precedence and priority of the present is the hallmark of our world. It is scattering time into a mere sequencing of purely disposable presences. Thereby, the future is degrading into an optimised present. The totalisation of the present destroys actions that GIVE TIME, such as taking responsibility and making promises.
The occupants of the digital panoptican are not prisoners. Their element is illusory freedom. They feed the digital panoptican by exhibiting themselves and shining a light on every part of their lives.......... Auto-exploition is more efficient than allo- exploitation because a feeling of freedom accompanies it. In the process of autoillumination, pornographic exhibition and panoptic control mergd into one. Control society reaches completion when it's inhabitants communicate, not because of external constraints but one of inner need- when fear about giving up one's private and intimate sphere- yields to the urge to put oneself on display, without shame. In other words, it occurs when freedom and control prove indistinguishable.
Data Barbarism.(Dadaism)
When the data collected is published and exchanged, self- tracking comes to resemble self- surveillance more and more. The subject of today's world is an entrepreneur of the self, practising self-exploitation- and by the same token, self surveillance. The auto exploiting subject carries around its own labour camp; here, it is perpetrator and victim at one and the same time. As a self- illuminating, self- surveilling subject, it bears its own internal Panoptican within; here, there is no difference between guard and inmate. The digitalised, networked subject is a PANOPTICAN OF ITSELF. This ensures that each and every person has now taken on the task of conducting perpetual auto-surveillance (communicating ourselves to death- narcissist compulsion to self- exposure) ..... digital psychopolitics manages to intervene in psychic processes in a prospective fashion. Quite possibly, it is even FASTER than free will. As such, it could overtake it. If so, this would herald the END OF FREEDOM........in this light, Big Data is making the ID INTO AN EGO to be exploited psychopolitically. (Domination is complete when surveillance coincides with limitless communication)
Domination is complete when surveillance coincides
with limitless communication.
The digital is the medium of projection.
Narcissistic islands of egos. Dissolving all boundaries in digital projection of dots and pixels, zeros and ones.
Compulsion and constraint now take the form of performance,achievement, self-optimisation and auto-exploition. Freedom is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. More freedom amounts to more pressure, as a form of coercion.
The achievement subject exploits itself until it collapses. It develops AUTO-AGGRESSIVE traits.